When I first met Dale to chat about her wedding photos, she brought pages and pages of tear sheets of wedding photos she loved, and they all had a common theme – rich, golden and sun-drenched.

When we shot Dale and Dan’s engagement shoot on the beach at the Spit, it was the first sunny day for weeks and I thanked the Weather Gods for smiling on us. Things were looking good for Dale’s dream wedding photos, right?

When Dale and Dan got married, it rained.

All. Day.

Dale shrugged her shoulders and smiled and said, “oh well,” and proceeded with one of the most touching and personal weddings I have ever had the pleasure to attend.

I also got to make friends with three seriously awesome girls – here’s a shoutout to my photobooth bridesmaid BFFs Felicity, Baylee and Maddy! Keep an eye out at the bottom of the post for a couple of shots of our awesomeness, courtesy of The Photo Pod.

And here’s me and the girls, getting our photobooth on!

Vendors:

Ceremony venue: Cabarita Beach
Reception venue: Marty’s at Caba
Flowers: Elyssium Blooms
Hair and makeup: Luvlea Beauty
Photo booth: The Photo Pod

Before I introduce you to this incredibly gorgeous couple, let’s talk about engagement sessions.

I LOVE engagement sessions. Engagement sessions are the best!

Originally couples had engagement sessions with their wedding photographers so that they’d have a nice photo to send to the newspaper along with their engagement announcement, but there are bunch of other great reasons to consider having an engagement shoot before you get married.

How do you feel about having your photo taken? Most people cringe at the thought – we all have an image in our heads of what we look like, and with cameras everywhere these days often the pictures we suddenly find ourselves tagged in on Facebook at that family barbeque last week don’t match up with that mental picture. “I hate having my picture taken.” You’d be amazed how often I hear that sentence uttered!

Here’s the single greatest thing about engagement sessions – you get used to being photographed before your big day! So when it counts, when your photographer pulls out that big black camera and aims it your way, you won’t panic because you’ve done this before! You also get a feel for how your photographer works and what they’ll be asking you to do on your wedding day, not to mention you all get to know each other better, which is great because it establishes trust between you – and that means way better wedding photos for you!

But that’s not all – if you’re a bit crafty with your scheduling, engagement sessions can give clever brides a chance to try out their makeup and see how it looks photographed. You’ll also end up with a bunch of great photos of the two of you that you can use on save the date cards, invitations, place settings, gifts for your parents, or a super-nifty custom guest book to have all your favourite people sign at your reception.

And there’s one more, super-important reason to have an engagement session. They’re heaps of fun.

Let me introduce you to Dale and Daniel. These guys are getting married on the 2nd of June, and I couldn’t be more excited to photograph their wedding. Despite being easy on the eyes, Daniel isn’t a fan of having his photo taken so their engagement session at the Spit in Southport on a sunny Saturday afternoon was the perfect chance to get him comfortable in front of the camera – and I let him keep his hat or his sunnies on for a few of the shots too, to ease him into it!

(Right after we took this shot a huge wave came up and swept all our stuff up the beach! Luckily Dale had an awesome waterproof beach bag, and it was totally worth the soggy knees to get this photo, anyway.)